From Superstition the Pendulum Your face carried home from the scene of horror Let nature raise you a colossus that prows Prows astraddle the edge of all landfalls Clocks will crack and mirrors stop Unluckiness the hostelman calls to roost The iron ring for a knocker hangs Sounds wood and metalcraft, chock and clang And the hand that would be death’s…

The Ad Said (part three) Along the rails was a place to walk, a narrow trench, not clearly intended…or clearly not intended…for public use. A wrong step could lose you your shoe. More rotten luck if it happened. “I can go first,” Hermie said. “Look out where you put your foot.” “God. The river.” Hettie wasn’t moving; she was leaning on a beam.

Where Fashion Sits   Are you the larval worm in the larder Every feathered pillow has this unseen delver You feel yourself layered in tissue paper Your rat’s race a…

Are You Haunted (part twenty) But his old friends would call him a liar, if he told them he had left believing the work would save them all. In expiation, Rohdl could say only that the lie had been told to him. How could it make a difference? He had never been close to as many as twenty or thirty people.

Caught Alone Loved one, they gather on the stairs The passageway is closed The door will jar against a darting shape Unnoticed, their kind, snuffed in the daily cataclysm One will tear the fabric Go She is standing in the kitchen of her mother’s house Caught alone Under the popeyed voyeur’s thumb She hears disjointed blurbs of speech They come two or three times…